The present invention relates generally to flexible mounting apparatus and particularly, to molded plastic interconnecting ball and socket elements in combination with a positively-positionable mountable base and coupler interconnected thereto.
Various couplers and especially those of ball and socket variety are generally known in this art. However, except for the inventor""s own ball-and-socket universally positionable mounting device disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,845,885, the complete disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference, the known couplers typically hold by friction and are prone to various degrees of slippage under load.
The present invention is a positively-positionable mounting apparatus having a ball mount, a multisided positionable mount, and a coupler. The coupler includes two relatively rigid arm members and a clamp structured to secure the arm members together in an operatively juxtaposed configuration. Each of the arm members is formed with a part hemispherical socket adjacent to a first end, the socket structured to cooperate with the ball mount to form a securely positionable ball-and-socket assembly. Each of the arm members is also formed with a multisided partial collar adjacent to a second end, the partial collar structured to cooperate with the multisided positionable mount to form a positively-positionable wheel-and-axle assembly.
According to one aspect of the invention, the ball mount is a part-spherical ball mount formed of a radially compressible material, and the part hemispherical sockets are structured to be secured together around the part-spherical ball mount by the clamp and deform the part-spherical ball mount.
According to another aspect of the invention, the ball mount is a second multisided positionable mount, such as a partial geodesic sphere, and the part hemispherical sockets are structured with internal contours that cooperate with the second multisided positionable mount.